Page 97 of Fate's Sweetest Curse
“You shouldn’t concern yourself with me.”
I scoffed. “You sound like my aunt.”
He cracked a true smile, butit was brief.
“How do you contain it?” I asked—but maybe I already knew.
Wordlessly, Noble went to the desk and opened the small drawer, retrieving an empty glass vial from inside. He held it out to me. Our fingers brushed as I took it from his grasp. Something low in my belly fluttered at the contact. I tried to ignore it as I sniffed the mouth of the bottle, then brought the glass rim to the tip of my tongue, tasting the residue of what it had once contained.
The flavor was unmistakable because it was mine: a Black Lace Hylder tincture. I’d tasted it on his tongue when we kissed in the gardens and had written it off as the scent of the nearby shrub confusing my senses; I hadn’twantedto taste it on him, hadn’t wanted to face the possibility…
“That was you in the alley,” I realized.
Noble’s lips pressed into a tense line. “Angry with me yet?”
“No, although I’m a little angry with Phina for keeping so much hidden.”
The kettle over the fire began to whistle, drawing our attention. Noble turned, removing it from the heat. For about sixty seconds, he busied himself with making our tea, and I was relieved to have a temporary respite from this conversation.
When Noble finished preparing our tea, he set my mug on the small desk, pulled out the single wooden chair, and gestured for me to sit. Settling into the seat, I cradled the mug in my hands and sagged with all the tension I’d been carrying.
“I know it’s no excuse,” Noble said, sitting on the edge of the bed, across from me, “but I wanted to tell you. I just—”
“Couldn’t,” I finished for him. “I know.” I blew on my tea, took a sip, smiled at the comforting flavor. “Chamomile.”
“It’s your favorite,” Noble said. “Or, at least, it was.”
“Still is.”
He nodded, as if he was committing that updated information to memory.
“If Hylder suppresses your…affliction,” I began delicately, “then what’s the purpose of Phina’s research?”
“Hylder is not a long-term solution,” Noble replied. “It barely contains—” He broke off, clenching his teeth—his Oath must’ve been limiting him. “The efficacy is worsening.”
“Phina told me the Black Lace tincture is more potent.”
“It is,” Noble said, and he sounded almost pleased that I had been the one to discover the better varietal. “It’s not as effective as your tincture from Waldron, though,” he added.
“Any idea why?”
He shook his head. “It’s half the reason Phina brought you in, but…”
“But my experiments have been inconclusive.” I set my tea aside. “What happens when it stops working?”
“I turn.”
…into a monsterremained unsaid.
When I’d seen that hooded figure in the alley, the violent shaking and moaning—knights arguing and the urgency to provide Hylder—it had all seemed soalarming. But as I regarded Noble now, with the light of the candles splashing gold across his handsome, masculine features, I was not alarmed.
I felt protective—angry.
A cold, icy fury swept through me like a winter wind. I stood and began to pace again. “How did they do it?”
Noble’s throat bobbed, drawing my attention to the thin line of his Oath tattoo that ringed his neck. “I don’t know much, Hattie, but the little I do know, I am not permitted to say.”
“How much does Phina know?”
